Equalitarian Societies are Economically Impossible

The inequality of wealth distribution is a universal phenomenon in the civilized nations, and it is often imputed to the Matthew effect, that is, the rich get richer and the poor get poorer. Some philosophers unjustified this phenomenon and tried to put the human civilization upon the evenness of wealth. Noticing the facts that 1) the emergence of the centralism is the starting point of human civilization, i.e., people in a society were organized hierarchically, 2) the inequality of wealth emerges simultaneously, this paper proposes a wealth distribution model based on the hidden tree structure from the viewpoint of complex network. This model considers the organized structure of people in a society as a hidden tree, and the cooperations among human beings as the transactions on the hidden tree, thereby explains the distribution of wealth. This model shows that the scale-free phenomenon of wealth distribution can be produced by the cascade controlling of human society, that is, the inequality of wealth can parasitize in the social organizations, such that any actions in eliminating the unequal wealth distribution would lead to the destroy of social or economic structures, resulting in the collapse of the economic system, therefore, would fail in vain

Aboveground Biomass and Soil Moisture as Affected by Short-Term Grazing Exclusion in Eastern Alpine Meadows of the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau, China

Heavy grazing substantially influences grassland vegetation and animal nutrition on the Qinghai-Tibet plateau (Guo et al. 2003). Degradation is characterized by a reduction in vegetation height, reduced ground cover decrease in species diversity (Wang et al. 2007). The objective of this study was to determine the effects of short-term exclusion from grazing on aboveground herbage, forage nutritive value, and soil moisture in an alpine meadow in the eastern zone of the plateau. Three farms, applying different intensity of grazing over the summer months, were compared

NanoSIMS analysis of water content in bridgmanite at the micron scale: An experimental approach to probe water in Earth’s deep mantle

Water, in trace amounts, can greatly alter chemical and physical properties of mantle minerals and exert primary control on Earth’s dynamics. Quantifying how water is retained and distributed in Earth’s deep interior is essential to our understanding of Earth’s origin and evolution. While directly sampling Earth’s deep interior remains challenging, the experimental technique using laser-heated diamond anvil cell (LH-DAC) is likely the only method available to synthesize and recover analog specimens throughout Earth’s lower mantle conditions. The recovered samples, however, are typically of micron sizes and require high spatial resolution to analyze their water abundance. Here we use nano-scale secondary ion mass spectrometry (NanoSIMS) to characterize water content in bridgmanite, the most abundant mineral in Earth’s lower mantle. We have established two working standards of natural orthopyroxene that are likely suitable for calibrating water concentration in bridgmanite, i.e., A119(H2O) = 99 ± 13 μg/g (1SD) and A158(H2O) = 293 ± 23 μg/g (1SD). We find that matrix effect among orthopyroxene, olivine, and glass is less than 10%, while that between orthopyroxene and clinopyroxene can be up to 20%. Using our calibration, a bridgmanite synthesized by LH-DAC at 33 ± 1 GPa and 3,690 ± 120 K is measured to contain 1,099 ± 14 μg/g water, with partition coefficient of water between bridgmanite and silicate melt ∼0.025, providing the first measurement at such condition. Applying the unique analytical capability of NanoSIMS to minute samples recovered from LH-DAC opens a new window to probe water and other volatiles in Earth’s deep mantle

Synthesis and biological evaluation of novel bi-gold mitocans in lung cancer cells

Mitochondria are promising drug target for cancer treatment. We previously demonstrated that a bi-gold compound BGC2a was more potent than the mono-gold drug auranofin in suppressing cancer cells due to increased gold atom number that led to higher drug accumulation in and thereby inhibition of mitochondria. To exploit the potential of this new strategy, we further designed and synthesized a series of bi-gold mitocans, the compounds targeting mitochondria. The results showed that most of the newly synthesized mitocans exhibited obviously lower IC50 than auranofin, an old drug that is repurposed in clinical trials for cancer treatment. The best mitocan C3P4 was nearly 2-fold more potent than BGC2a in human non-small cell lung cancer A549 cells and mantle cell lymphoma Jeko-1 cells, exhibiting substantial colony formation-suppressing and tumor-suppressing effects in A549 cells xenograft model. C3P4 induced apoptosis in a dose-dependent manner and arrested cell cycle at G0/G1 phase. The mechanistic study showed that C3P4 significantly increased the global reactive oxygen species and mitochondrial superoxide level, and reduced the mitochondrial membrane potential. C3P4 preferentially accumulated in mitochondria as measured by the gold content and substantially inhibited oxygen consumption rate and ATP production. These results further validated our hypothesis that targeting mitochondria would be promising to develop more potent anticancer agents. C3P4 may be further evaluated as a drug candidate for lung cancer treatment